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A federal lawsuit contends the operators of a North Carolina drug rehab program farmed out recovering addicts to work in adult care homes and restaurants and pocketed the wages for the labor they performed. The lawsuit filed by Andrew Presson of Olney, Maryland, and Kimberly Myris of Pinehurst, North Carolina, contends they enrolled in a residential substance abuse recovery program run by Recovery Connections Community. The plaintiffs say they and others in recovery then worked up to 16 hours a day bathing patients, changing diapers and serving meals at businesses that contracted with...

Former patients of the drug rehab program Recovery Connections Community are demanding back pay for years of free work they performed as caregivers in adult care homes across North Carolina, according to a new federal lawsuit filed against the program and care homes. “For years, Defendants have escaped public oversight and accountability in profiting from unpaid labor performed by individuals struggling to overcome substance abuse and addiction,” according to the complaint filed Thursday. Rather than providing drug treatment, the lawsuit said Recovery Connection Community’s purpose was to...

Former patients of the drug rehab program Recovery Connections Community are demanding back wages for years of working for free as caregivers in adult care homes and other companies. Recovery Connections is one of a number of rehab programs across the U.S. that requires participants to work for for-profit companies. The class action complaint comes in response to an investigation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting which found the program’s patients turned employees regularly worked more than eighty hours per week without compensation, while the founders, Jennifer and...

Patients at the Recovery Connections Community rehabilitation center thought they were enrolling in a proper residential drug recovery program nestled high in the Appalachian mountains. Instead, they say, they were made to live in filthy trailers, verbally abused, and forced into unpaid labor, just to stay enrolled. Now, they’ve filed a federal lawsuit in the Eastern District of North Carolina, naming Recovery Connections Community and a number of local businesses, where patients say they were forced to work as contracted, low-cost laborers, as defendants. An investigation from the Center for...

Two people who were enrolled in a residential drug recovery program are suing its operators, claiming their wages were stolen. The federal lawsuit also names businesses that Recovery Connections Community supplied with workers under contracts, including an assisted living home and a fast-food restaurant in Harnett County. The lawsuit says those businesses paid less than minimum wage to workers Recovery Connections supplied, and avoided paying overtime wages. Recovery Connections Community’s operations were the subject of reports this year by Reveal, a news site run by the Center for...

For years, Jennifer Warren openly flouted federal labor law. She forced patients in her drug rehab program to work 80 hour weeks for free as caregivers in assisted living facilities across North Carolina. Then in 2013, a reckoning came. The federal Department of Labor told Warren she was breaking the law and ordered her to pay her patients minimum wage and overtime for their work. Warren promised to comply in the future. But that never happened, according to federal records obtained by Reveal. For at least five more years, Warren ignored labor laws and forced her patients to work for free to...

Seven adult care homes in North Carolina collected more than $8.4 million in Medicaid funding while employing untrained caregivers, some with serious criminal histories, Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting has found. Medicaid-funded caregivers in North Carolina are required to receive at least 80 hours of training within six months of being hired and can’t have criminal convictions for drug trafficking or other specific crimes. But Reveal found many workers in the homes who said they received little to no training and identified several with criminal convictions that should...

When Community Cafe opened near Raleigh, North Carolina, last year, locals in the small town welcomed the new restaurant with open arms. They flocked to the bright green building to buy cheap Southern staples and to support the cafe’s charitable mission: to provide training and jobs for people in rehab who were recovering from addiction. “We’re cooking what the community wants to eat,” chef and rehab participant Jerry Knutson said in a local news article at the time. “Biscuits and gravy, omelets and eggs – country breakfast at a good price.” There’s a reason Community Cafe’s prices are so low...

Jennifer Warren has spent years recruiting the poor and desperate to her drug rehabilitation program in the mountains outside Asheville, North Carolina. She promised them counseling and recovery for free. When they arrived, she put them to work 16 hours a day for no pay at adult care homes for the elderly and disabled. Thrust into the homes with little training or sleep, the rehab participants changed diapers, bathed patients and sometimes dispensed the same prescription drugs that sent them spiraling into addiction in the first place. For some, the temptation proved too great. They snorted...

A northeastern Oklahoma drug and alcohol rehabilitation program and an Arkansas-based chicken processing corporation have been accused of human trafficking and labor law violations in a lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court in Tulsa. "Under the guise of providing alcohol and drug counseling and rehabilitation services," Christian Alcoholics and Addicts in Recovery (CAAIR) operated a "work camp program" in Delaware County in which court-referred participants were "required to provide free labor for Simmons Foods under constant threat of incarceration," the lawsuit alleges. Participants...

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